The Mushrooms are out there

The Beauty, my post-apocalyptic novella, has been published and is available to buy in all the usual places as an e-book or a physical object. There are already some brilliant reviews of it out there, including this one by The Literary Tree. It’s amazing that so many people are connecting with it.

There’s also a review by Stephen Theaker in Interzone #254 – “The Beauty is intellectual and visceral, frightening and thoughtful, an adventure and a meditation. ” If you’d like to read more you can buy copies of Interzone here.

I have to admit that I didn’t find out a lot about fungi before I wrote The Beauty, but I’ve become fascinated by them since then. The ones that can kill you and the ones that defy classification and the ones that can degrade plastic. I’ve started seeing them everywhere. A friend of mine told me she read the novella, then looked up and smelled that damp, earthy smell of autumn. It was coming from her own garden; the season is changing, and she shivered with the thought of all the silent, spreading mushrooms.